Intel's Flagship Chip Seems Invisible To Street Dealers
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"Pssst! Wanna Buy a Pentium 4?
By Vince Freeman
Intel's Flagship Chip Seems Invisible To Street Dealers
We all know Dell and Compaq can get all the parts they want, but can your local reseller or white-box system builder? And what does street-level parts availability say about products' market acceptance?
I ask because an interesting thing happened to me last week. I was setting up an Intel Pentium 4-based reference desktop system and madly searching for a few missing components. The most glaring need was for a new ATX 2.03 system case to house the PC -- due to the physical and power requirements of the motherboard itself, I couldn't just jury-rig it into an existing ATX case and replace the power supply. This puppy would live only in a fully compatible Pentium 4 housing.
No problem, I thought, I'll just do a bit of searching in the local PC publications and find a new case. The pickings were quite slim, but I was able to find a few meager P4 case listings -- but after making a few calls and finding them all "out of stock," I moved my search to the Web.
First I hit eBay and found a small selection of Pentium 4 cases listed, but without the housing and high-end power supply unit I required. At first, the number of results returned was so small I thought I must have typed the wrong text string, but I tried various derivatives of the search with the same limited results.
This was becoming a decidedly more difficult affair than I'd envisioned, so I once again started calling local outlets to inquire about special-ordering a specific Pentium 4 case for later delivery. Surprisingly, there was still no luck -- in fact, a few dealers openly laughed at the prospect of purchasing any P4 equipment, citing virtually nonexistent sales, low consumer interest, and steep inventory costs. Others would sell me a complete P4 system, but were out of stock on components, and couldn't give a firm reorder date.
The manager at one relatively large store even told me that he'd stocked Pentium 4 systems for a few months, but hadn't seen a single sale in that time, so the company had unceremoniously dropped the line from its product selection and had no current Pentium 4 distributor lists on hand.
To be blunt, every single one of the vendors I contacted over a period of four or five days told me that Intel Pentium III and AMD Athlon platforms made up the vast majority of their desktop sales. Naturally, if I wanted to buy SDRAM or DDR memory or a standard ATX case, they had page after page of options I could pick from.
Don't Build It; They Won't Come
One universal truth I gleaned from this exercise is that, if a market is unable to sell a particular finished platform in sufficient numbers, your chances of finding individual components for it are slim to none. This was also true for several large warehouse dealers -- who either had in stock or could order just about any hardware component you could dream of, but who once again had none of the Pentium 4 parts I was after. Even RDRAM was a lot tougher to find than I expected.
Consumer demand is an obvious part of this equation, especially as relates to the clone dealers I contacted. Apparently I was one of their few customers to even inquire about anything connected to the current P4 architecture -- I say "current" because, while I felt like an oddball inquiring about Pentium 4/RDRAM systems, demand seems to be building for Intel's upcoming versions.
Anticipation for the new 0.13-micron Pentium 4 "Northwood" processor must be exceedingly high -- in fact, many of the vendors I contacted assumed I was asking about Northwood availability rather than simply a new case for an 0.18-micron P4. I was even told it would be stupid for me to buy a Pentium 4 now, with the new CPUs right around the corner. After all, I could use SDRAM with the newer, faster models!
I don't know if this is the kind of in-store PR Intel wants, but according to vendors in my neighborhood, "everyone" is waiting for second-generation Pentium 4s and turning up their noses at existing offerings. True, enthusiasts' and IT insiders' Web sites like this one have written extensively about waiting for Northwood, but I had no idea the phenomenon had become so widespread among resellers and their customers.
And in these pinched economic times, high relative prices are a common complaint, as well. Smaller dealers simply don't have the economies of scale to keep up with behemoths like Dell, especially with the various rebate plans Intel's enacted. While a large vendor might have sold sufficient volumes of P4 systems to take advantage of Intel's RDRAM rebates (now reportedly being phased out), smaller vendors may not be able (or willing) to pursue that kind of sweetheart deal.
In fact, the original Pentium 4's reliance on RDRAM technology has probably been the biggest stumbling block of all. Now, I don't like Rambus or its strong-arm, royalty-seeking legal tactics in the least, but I draw a distinction between the company and the RDRAM technology it designs, licenses and promotes. Apparently, many do not -- and the debut of the P4 Northwood seems less anticipated for itself than for the concurrent launch of Intel's i845 SDRAM chipset. Whether it's cost, availability, or just plain bias, street-level consumers and dealers seem to view both Rambus and RDRAM with disdain.
What became crystal-clear in my hunt is that, while the current Pentium 4 is reputedly selling well enough, its "street impact" is substantially less than anticipated. Sales of Pentium 4 processors, motherboards, and full systems may be adequate, but seem almost totally dependent on the big brands like Dell, Compaq, and HP. From my experience, if Intel had to rely on resellers and assemblers for Pentium 4 revenues, it would make for some interesting quarterly results.
Oh, if you're wondering how my search for a P4 case turned out, I was finally able to find one at a corporate-oriented online vendor. The design was one I could live with, the shipping rate was low, and the seller thankfully didn't seem to realize I was one step away from selling my soul to the Devil for one. Meanwhile, no matter what you read or hear, there's nothing like beating the streets (both literal and online) for a few days to illuminate exactly who's buying what.
July 31, 2001"
Peter |
